This invention is directed generally to improvement of environmental protection, materials recovering, recycling, and resource conservation, using a novel procedure and method for the removal and recovery of inorganic pollutant materials from waste water sources of aqueous solutions and/or from waste gases and/or suspension particles sources.
Waste pollutant materials treatment procedures and processes have been and continue to be a matter of great importance for environmental protection and for resources conservation. Many industrial and commercial processes generate substantial quantities of waste water, waste gases and waste suspension particles, much of which are contaminated with toxic metal elements and/or ions such as heavy metals (e.g., lead, copper, zinc, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, chromium, etc.,), compounds with toxic elements, dissolved inorganic elements (e.g., calcium, sodium, sulfates, phosphates, etc.), primary air pollutant gases (e.g., nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon disulfide, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid, etc.,), and aerosols and/or suspension particles (e.g., hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acid aerosols and metal oxide particles).
The most pollutant industrial and commercial processing plants include electronic, non-ferrous and ferrous metallurgical, chemical, textile, pharmaceutical, pigments and dyes, construction materials, nuclear, food, etc. Most pollutants of above industries cannot be discharged into environment without endangering the biological and environment health. In many urban areas throughout the world industrial born air and water pollution reach and exceed toxic level thresholds. For example, in the United States, the Great Lakes Basin has on of the largest population density in the U.S., and is one of the world""s largest pollutant area. This basin, bordered by Northeast of U.S. and by Southeast of Canada, with the world""s largest fresh water reservoir, is one of the most affected by man""s activities. As existing pilot watershed studies show, some of the most pollutant sources in the Grate Lakes Basin are due to urban industrial and commercial activities. Addressing this issue is therefore increasingly important. Also, the recovery of valuable materials by large industries is becoming one of the resource conservation priorities.
An important requirement of water and air quality management and of the man""s life is to prevent the rivers water and lakes water pollution with polluted liquids of industrial waste and to disperse in air industrial gaseous pollutants. Thus, it is fundamental that the removal and recovery of industrial pollutants are made simultaneously or successively in their own industry origin, in small or large treatment facilities, before the waste polluted liquids are discharged in rivers, lakes and seas. The waste water and air quality criteria and requirements not only depend on the specific industry, but also on the feed water quality and on the environmental biology and therefore the methods for waste water and waste gaseous materials treatment. Therefore, the treatment methods of pollutant waste suspension particles in water and air are very diversified.
Many physical, chemical, physicochemical, biological technologies and combination of them are well known in the art, and a large number of processes and technologies have been applied quite successfully for the treatment of waste waters and waste gases, and waste suspension particles and for other environment related applications. The waste water and waste air pollutants removal and recovery treatment procedures, processes, methods and apparatuses are described in literature in many books, monographs, and papers, as for example:
Fundamentals of Air Pollution Engineering, Prentice Hall, 1988, by Richard C. Flagan, John H. Seinfeld.
Water Treatment Handbook, Degremontxe2x80x94Societe Generale d""Epuration et d""Assainissment, France, 1973.
Waste Water Treatment Technology, Ann Arbor Science Publishing Inc., 1975, by James W. Patterson.
Air Pollution Control and Design Handbook, Marcel Decker, Inc., vol. 1 and vol. 2, 1977, by Paul N. Cheremisinoff, Richard A. Young.
The Solubility of Nonelectrolytes, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1964, by Joel H. Hildebrand and Robert L. Scott.
Crystallization as a Separations Process, American Chemical Society, Washington D.C., 1990, by Allan S. Myerson and Ken Toyokura.
Technologies for Small Water and Waste Water Systems, (Environmental Engineering Series), Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1991, by Edward J. Martin, Edward T, Martin.
Pollution Prevention In Industrial Processes, American Chemical Society, Washington D.C., 1992, by Joseph J. Breen and Michael J. Delarco.
Data for Radioactive Waste Management and Nuclear Applications, John Wiley and Co., 1985, by Donald C. Stewart.
Industrial Water and Waste Water Systems, Publishing House Stroyizdat, Moscow (Russian), 1990, by S. V. Yakovlev, Ya. A Karelin, Yu. V. Voronov.
Environmental Strategy for The Great Lakes Systemxe2x80x94Final Report to The International Joint Commission from International Reference Group on Great Lakes Pollution, 1978.
Physicochemical Methods for Water and Water Treatment, Pergamon Press, 1980, by Lucjan Pawlowski.
Kinetic of Metal Ion Adsorption from Aqueous Solutions (Models, Algorithms, and Applications), by Sotira Yiacoumi and Chi Tien, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 1995.
Poisoning and Promotion in Catalysis Based on Surface Science Concepts and Experiments, by M. P. Kiskinova, Elsevier, Amsterdam 1992.
Separation and Purification by Crystallization, by Gregory D. Botsaris and Ken Toyokura, ACS Symposium Series 667, Washington, D.C. 1997.
Various fundamental,and practical aspects of the relevant pollutant waste inorganic sources treatment processes, including physicochemical phase transition processes as well as different procedures, methods and apparatuses implied in our patent description are also described in the above listed sources. These data are also applicable to waste organic pollutant of chemical elements treatment, e.g., removal and/or recovery of pollutants molecules and systems which have permanent or temporary dipole momentum.
There are many waste water and waste air pollutants treatment processes in use today, e.g., ion exchange, coagulation-flocculation-sedimentation, chemical precipitation (e.g., sulfide precipitation, hydroxide precipitation, etc.,), chemical oxidation/reduction, filtration, activated chemical absorption, to name just a few, and in consequence, a large variety of methods and apparatuses have been developed. All of these processes have advantages that may recommend them for particular applications, and disadvantages that preclude their use for other applications. For the sake of clarity we are only giving here a few examples.
Ion exchange methods are useful where decontamination and recovery of precious metals is desirable. However, ion exchange resins are expensive, and ion exchange methods cannot ordinarily be used effectively for solutions containing high concentrations of ancillary salts.
Hydroxide precipitation is inexpensive and effective to precipitate metals having insoluble hydroxides which are not dissoluted in excess alkali. However, alkali hydroxide is poisonous and corrosive and the excess hydroxide must be neutralized with acid before the treated waste water can be returned to the environment.
Sulfide precipitation can be used effectively to precipitate contaminated metals which form insoluble sulfides (U.S. Pat. No. 4,329,224). However, soluble sulfides from toxic liquids can release one of the most toxic and unpleasant gases on exposure to acids. Thus, any process using compressed hydrogen sulfide, or soluble sulfide, is inherently dangerous. The method for reducing the concentration and for recovering of any undesirable metals dissolved in contaminated waste water is less dangerous using the sulfite process (U.S. Pat. No. 5,011,611) than with the sulfide process. Of course, the pollutant metals removed from solution by this process do not disappear. They remain in the sediment. or solid phase until recycled or disposed of. Furthermore, the resulted SO2 is an irritating gas and although it is stable in a dry medium, when it is discharged in a wet air atmosphere and under solar radiation, or when suspension of small particles are present, it forms acidic rain, so it necessitates a recovery treatment before discharging.
Many methods and processes in use today for removing and/or recovering of inorganic pollutants are based on reactions of chemical compounds, chemical elements reaction, and combination of chemical compound reactions with physical methods. Generally, these methods, procedures and processes require large quantities of chemical materials.
The present invention relates to a new method for treating polluted waste industrial and commercial water, and/or primary air pollutants such as waste industrial gases, and/or suspension particles, such as toxic aerosols, to remove and/or recover undesirable polluting metals, inorganic compounds, dissolved inorganic elements from water, toxic inorganic gases and toxic suspensions present in air and water. The novel method and procedure described in the present invention by using waste heat, nuclear radiation of spent fuel bars, waste chemical products, waste suspension particles and electrical power, does not have some of the disadvantages, dangers and other limitations of prior-known procedures and/or methods of pollutants removal and recovery from industrial waste water and waste air pollutants. The method of present invention consists of treating waste polluted water, and/or waste pollutant gases, and/or waste suspension pollutant particles in air, using the combined, and simultaneous/successive conjugated physicochemical effects (CSCPCE) of pressure, temperature, electric- and radiation fields, and air/or aqueous suspension particles.
According to the present invention nuclear-, thermal-, electrical-, and mechanical energy, waste pollutant and/or non pollutant suspension particles can be used for the removal and/or recovery of inorganic pollutants from waste industrial water and/or waste industrial pollutants of air. The nuclear or electromagnetic radiation produce ionization of pollutant chemical elements and compounds, and the ionization rate increases with increasing temperature. The electric field produces ion""s separation from the aqueous solution and deposits it them into the solid phase on multiple pairs of spaced apart selective electrodes, as non-pollutant and recovered materials. For water insoluble and hard soluble chemical pollutant compounds with positive solubilization coefficients, an increased pressure and temperature produces/increases the solubilization of the pollutants by allowing the reaction""s activating energy of different solution components to decrease, which facilitates the formation of new compounds which are non pollutant or less pollutant. The resulting chemical compounds remain in the aqueous medium or are removed and/or recovered as gases and/or sludge. For pollutant materials which have negative coefficient of solubilization in water, elevated temperatures at elevated pressures are not required to increase the solubility and, consequently, the pollutant""s separation take place on selective electrodes under an electric field through phase transition processes into solid phase. The suspension of pollutant and non pollutant particles in air and/or water act as catalytic agents for the ionization processes above and for the formation of new chemical ions and compounds which require a lower ionization energy. Besides, the suspension particles act as condensation and coagulation centers and as catalyst for the solid, gas and sludge phases formation. Furthermore, the suspension particles catalyze the formation of non polluted gases and liquid compound components, through a chemical absorption mechanism. In certain physicochemical hydrothermal conditions of pressure, and radiation, the suspension particles act as mineralizers in the hydrothermal physicochemical phase transition processes. Suspension particles with certain composition, in determined hydrothermal conditions help phase transitions processes, such as: crystallization, coagulation and precipitation, and gasification processes to take place.
The objectives of the present invention are to provide a novel method for:
simultaneous removal and/or recovery of inorganic pollutants from waste polluted water and/or waste gaseous materials, and/or waste suspension particles in air and water;
waste pollutant removal from waste water and for the pollutant materials recovery using a selective system, with spaced apart electrodes, immersed in contaminant liquids;
improving solubilization and/or ionization, and flocculation and/or coagulation of waste pollutant elements, chemical compounds or suspension particles;
synthesis from pollutant chemical systems, of new compounds/radicals, and/or ions, less pollutant or non pollutant, which are easier removed and/or recovered;
removal and/or recovery of inorganic pollutants from waste water and of waste gases pollutants using waste pollutant suspension particles or non-pollutant suspension particles as catalyzer of physicochemical processes;
improving inorganic pollutants removal and/or recovery from waste polluted water, and/or from waste polluted gases, and/or from waste polluted suspension particles using nuclear radiation of spent fuel nuclear bars or electromagnetic radiation;
pollutant removal and recovery using waste heat sources.